Video Game / Wolf

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Wolf is a 1994 DOS game (you'll need DOSBox or similar to play it on a modern machine) downloadable here. In it, you simulate the life of a wolf in one of three environments: the pleasant timber forest, the blazingly hot prairie, or the frigid arctic. Hunt prey, mark your territory, find a mate, raise pups, and generally run around being a wolf. You can also harass humans and their cattle, if you're feeling suicidal.

Tropes:

Arcadia: Humans apparently love the forest and prairie, since they're pleasant and good for grazing cattle. You'll wish they'd go home instead, because humans are the most annoying enemy in the game.

Asskicking Equals Authority: The alpha wolf generally gets to be (and stay) alpha by being bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than the rest of the pack. This dates the game, because we now know this is not always true of real wolves, whose "alphas" are the parents of the rest and thus dominant by default.

Bloodless Carnage: Meat is red, but that's as much blood as you'll ever see. The process of killing an animal - whether that's you killing your dinner or a hunter killing you - results in zero blood.

Critical Existence Failure: Averted; while you only have one health meter, it governs your physical abilities. If you are injured, you will be unable to sprint and can only limp along at a pace about as fast as a trot. Played straight with your hunger, thirst, and endurance meters, however. Either you can run some more, or you must trot; either you are fed and watered, or you are dead. You don't slow down before you stop.

Death from Above: Hunters prowl the skies in helicopters and planes. If you see one coming, don't even bother barking to alert your packmates; just tuck your tail between your legs and scram, because if that shadow touches you, a sniper is gonna take you down in one hit.

Grim Up North: The tundra itself seems to try to kill you, even on "good weather" settings.

Hold the Line: Some of the scenarios require you to keep your mate or cubs alive for a certain number of days.

Humans Are Cthulhu: They'll kill you faster than anything else. Aerial humans are always hunters, but it's impossible to tell a harmless hiker from a deadly hunter until the bullets start flying, so avoid the walking ones, too.

Hyperactive Metabolism: Averted; you need a full belly to heal, but it's not instantaneous. A rabbit does not solve your limp, even assuming you can limp fast enough to catch said rabbit.

Manual Leader, AI Party: When you rally your pack to hunt large animals, you'll only control your own wolf. The others will simply follow along and provide an attack bonus if you make your move while they're reasonably close. You can also press A and have the game autoplay for you if you wish.

Nintendo Hard: The scenarios tend to try to kill you as fast as possible - you may start out injured, thirsty, and far from water, for example, and just solving your basic needs can take up most of the time allotted. Even setting the simulation parameters to easy (plenty of prey, few humans, good weather), you're still likely to die quite quickly.

Noble Wolf: The game generally tries to depict wolves realistically, but was made with the intent that seeing how they live would make people care about them. The information snippets are definitely written with a Noble Wolf in mind.

One-Hit Kill: Helicopter and plane bullets are always one-hit kills. Bullets fired by ground-based hunters may sometimes be one-hit kills, but are just as often two-hit kills.

Pregnant Badass: Pregnant alpha females are still the alpha for a reason. She's just as capable of joining in an elk hunt as she was before mating season.

Papa Wolf: The alpha male when the pack has cubs, in a very literal version of this trope. Do not wander into a neighboring pack's territory.

Reality Ensues: Attack a cow and farmers will shoot you. You will die very fast.

Science Marches On: The references to alpha and beta wolves are generally considered redundant in modern literature, being based on observations of captive packs with an unnatural social structure of unrelated or semi-related individuals.note The breeding pair of a wild pack is naturally dominant because they are the parents of the other wolves - the other adults are last year's grown cubs who haven't yet left to form their own packs, and who typically do not challenge their parents, since they would then have breeding rights with their other parent and wolves aren't big on Parental Incest. Captive packs made up of unrelated wolves introduced to each other in adulthood tend to have a more volatile hierarchy, since there's no natural order but physical strength and disagreements must be settled; the two parties can't simply part ways.

Timed Mission: Scenarios all have a time limit on them, such as "find water in twelve hours" or "defeat the alpha within two days".

Unstable Equilibrium: Being injured means you can no long sprint, which makes it more difficult to hunt. However, you require food in order to begin the healing process, meaning you're likely to stay injured and thus stay hungry longer (unless you scavenge off the carcasses laying around, or had a stash of meat hidden somewhere nearby).

Video Game Cruelty Potential: If you manage to become alpha, make sure to pick on the beta who's the same sex as you. If you don't, they'll start a fight for dominance when they think they can take you, rather than getting a good reminder of why they shouldn't.

We Cannot Go on Without You: The simulation ends when the player's wolf dies, whether that wolf is an alpha or the omega and regardless of the state of the rest of the pack.

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